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The Euro, the ECB and The Neglect of Europe's Future

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi leaves after talks gathering European Union (EU) heads of State or government during an European Union summit at the EU headquarters, early on December 9, 2011 in Brussels. European Union leaders abandoned a bid to convince Britain to change the bloc's treaty to combat the eurozone debt crisis. Talks would now go forward seeking a new inter-governmental agreement designed for the 17 countries that make up the eurozone and others aiming to join the currency union. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

I wonder what the leaders of the Euro zone are thinking about as they pass their time on vacation? In all the discussion of the Euro and its crisis over the past three months, I have yet to hear one Euro politician say what they are going to do to create more jobs. Yes they will defend the Euro, even as it kills businesses to do so. But really, what about the unemployment problem that the Euro crisis has sent into an upward spiral?

I had my first experience of unemployment in 1973 as a 16 year old. In those days, in England, unemployed people had to queue every week to “sign on” and to pick up a check. One day in this queue I turned to my right and saw my father there, also signing on. Within five years he was dead, broken physically and spiritually.

Unemployment used to do that to people. I suspect it still does. We need to remind ourselves and the politicians of the very high personal cost of their policies. The EU counts this as a Euro problem when in reality it is many hundreds of thousands of personal tragedies that they are ignoring while they scramble around to keep the Euro on some kind of track. And here we see the most appalling facet of Europe right now. There is no accountability for the damage that the Euro policy is doing.

Another aspect of this is equally appalling. The EU now interprets the problem as a game they are forced to play with the markets. So no longer is it a problem of the European economy – which has been mismanaged into a tailspin in countries like Spain and for which Brussels should be held accountable. It is a problem of speculation.

Clearly the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has been left to string the markets along (he’s at it again today) until the real decision makers come back, probably by mid-August. Draghi’s attempts over the past two weeks to talk up the Euro project and the EU’s commitment to it are laughable, but only as laughable as the summits that have led to no concrete measures to break the sovereign-bank debt connection in countries like Spain. But worse than that, we have seen positively no initiative or vision for the future of work in Europe.

European leaders have no vision for what will constitute future markets, future skills needs, and future work patterns, nor for how they can interact with the corporate world to reinvent Europe. They are investing political capital in the Euro when they should be investing hard capital in the future. Millions of Europeans are experiencing an extraordinarily hard lesson in the mean time.

What about a few simple measures – a list of the fastest growing cities so that people can migrate and fuel growth in dynamic locations? How about a vision for the freelance economy and measures to stimulate it as well as help people to become more self-sufficient? How about setting the pace to become the leading free-agent bloc in the world? How about a radical statement on pensions – i.e. they won’t be there in the numbers and quantities we thought, get over it quickly. Or health – time to look after yourselves better because we are going to reduce medical spending and increase spending on self-sufficiency measures. What is the future?

I can’t help thinking that ten years down the line there might still be a Euro but it will rule over a shadow of an economy, populated by people disillusioned with politics and business. We’ve been there before!

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I comprehend the position of your article but I must say, the disillusionment you speak of with government and business is already in the majority in the USA. None of the governing parties have any positive answer to your questions concerning the SUA economy. And, the USA has been bloated with unemployment for a very long time. I am not trying to let the EU governors off the hook, but I must be fair, the USA, China, and Russia all have serious problems economically and very little true mention or action by their respective governments.